Thanksgiving is a holiday for spending time with friends and family over a heaping platter of comfort food, so why not celebrate this year with a special Thanksgiving dinner? After all, 2012 will go down in history as the year Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana, giving cannabis users a lot to be thankful for. Plus, incorporating easy-to-make cannabutter into traditional recipes will give your dinner conversation an extra buzz, not to mention help you and your guests to clean your plates. So, for those of you spending this Thursday with weed-friendly friends and family, here's a quick guide to cooking with cannabis.

Cannabutter.Making cannabutter is the first and most important step to create a THC-rich meal.

1. Pour a few cups of water into a large saucepan and bring to boil. For every ounce of marijuana, add one pound or four sticks of butter (or one ounce of oil for vegans).2. Once the butter is boiling, add weed, making sure it is floating about an inch-and-a-half from the pan's bottom, and turn the stove to a lower heat. (Keep in mind that you can use vaporized bud, and that high-quality weed is not necessary to get a good buzz.)3. Without burning the butter, heat the ingredients for at least an hour (the longer, the better) until the mixture resembles a thick, saucy liquid. Then, use the finest strainer you've got to remove the cannabis from the butter.4. Let the cannabutter sit in the refrigerator overnight so the water and butter separate as the cannabutter collects on top. Pour the water into the sink while blocking the cannabutter with, for example, a Tupperware lid.

Now that you've got your cannabutter ready to go, it's time to incorporate it into your favorite Thanksgiving foods. As you'll see, you can add cannabutter to pretty much anything, making for a wide variety of possible canna-snacks and entrees.

Let's Start With An Appetizer

Green-bean casserole is a regular dish at my family's Thanksgiving dinner (which, unfortunately, will not include cannabutter this year, or ever). Spruce up your recipe by adding cannabutter, or use the one below, from Coed Magazine:

Cannabutter Green Bean Casserole

Cooking time 30 mins, Serves 10 – 12

Ingredients:

• 2 cans Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup

• 1 cup milk (fat free or 2%)

• 1 onion finely diced

• 2 tablespoons cannabutter

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

• 8 cups cooked cut green beans

• 1 cup French Fried Onions

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large skillet sauté the chopped onion in a little cannabutter over medium heat for a few minutes until cooked.

3. Stir in the canned mushroom soup, milk, salt and pepper, green beans and 1 tablespoon of cannabutter and mix well until it's all warmed through.

4. Using the leftover cannabutter grease the casserole dish.

5. Transfer to the casserole dish, sprinkle with French Fried Onions and bake for 15 mins or until hot and bubbling.

The Main Course

Nothing is more important on Turkey Day than the turkey, and even that can be infused with cannabis. From Culture Magazine, here’s how to make this Thanksgiving’s main dish extra special:

What you need:

1 medium-sized (12- to 15-pound) turkey

1/2 cup marijuana butter

1/4 cup chicken broth

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

1 teaspoon sweet basil

1 teaspoon thyme leaves

1/2 teaspoon sage

How to make it:

Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat and blend in remaining ingredients. Stuff turkey or season with salt and pepper, if desired. Make a small incision in skin of turkey, force a finger through the slit and break the contact between the skin and the meat. Using a meat injector, squirt half the butter mixture under the skin. Cook the turkey according to your favorite method, basting with the remaining butter mixture every half hour until done.

Dessert

When most people think about weed food, they probably think about pot brownies, which seem to be the standard for weed food. There's also cookies and "space cakes," but they're straightforward recipes many of us mastered in high school. So let’s be adults here and start with a Thanksgiving classic: Pot Pumpkin Pie! From High Times:

Chef Ra’s Great Ganja Pumpkin Pie

2 cups fresh pumpkin or 1 16-oz. can of pumpkin pie filling

2 eggs (beaten)

1/4 cup condensed milk

1 tsp molasses

1/2 stick butter or margarine

1/4-oz fine ganja buds or fan leaves

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 9-inch unbaked pastry shell

Place the ganja, crushed and finely chopped, into a double-boiler pot (one pot that fits inside the other separated by water). Cook the ganja in the butter for 45 minutes over very low flame. Cook slowly without burning the butter. Then, strain out the particulate (leaves, stems, etc.) and set aside. Combine the beaten eggs, milk, molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, brown sugar and pumpkin in a large bowl, and beat. Add the ganja butter to the mixture. Pour the mixture into the pastry shell. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook pie for 50 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

There you have it! These dishes should make for a super-fun Thanksgiving celebration -- and one that, working alongside a little tryptophan, will leave you cozy, full and ready for a good night's sleep. One of the problems with eating a lot of weed food, however, is that THC gives you the munchies, and so quite often, the more weed food you eat, the hungrier you get. It's a slippery slope, so you may want to keep a plate of leftovers hidden away, just in case.

Kristen Gwynne is an associate editor and drug policy reporter at AlterNet. Follow her on Twitter: @KristenGwynne